Saxe-Meiningen was a small state,
covering about 423 square miles (1,100 km2).
It was the most liberal German state and, unlike its neighbours,
permitted a free press and criticism of the ruler.[1]

Marriage

By the end of 1811, King George III was
mad and, although still King in name, his heir and eldest son, George, was Prince
Regent. On 6 November 1817 the Prince Regent's only daughter, Princess Charlotte,
wife of Prince Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (later King Leopold I of the Belgians)
died in childbirth. Princess Charlotte was second in line to the
throne: had she outlived her father and grandfather, she would have
become Queen. With her death the King was left with twelve
children, and no legitimate grandchildren. The Prince Regent was
estranged from his wife, who was forty-nine years old. Thus, there
was little likelihood that he would have any further legitimate
children. To secure the line of succession, Prince William, Duke of
Clarence and the other sons of George III sought quick
marriages with the intent of producing offspring who could inherit
the throne. William already had ten illegitimate children by the
popular actress Dorothea Jordan but they were obviously
debarred from the succession.

Considerable allowances were likely to be voted by Parliament to
any Royal Duke who married, and
this acted as a further incentive for William to marry. Adelaide
was a princess from an unimportant German state, but William had a
limited choice of available princesses and, after deals with other
candidates fell through, a marriage to Adelaide was arranged. The
allowance proposed was slashed by Parliament, and the outraged Duke
considered calling off the marriage. However, Adelaide seemed the
ideal candidate: amiable, home-loving, and willing to accept
William's illegitimate children as part of the family.[2] The
arrangement was settled and William wrote to his eldest son, "She
is doomed, poor dear innocent young creature, to be my
wife."[3]

Despite these unromantic circumstances, the couple settled
amicably in Hanover (where
the cost of living was much lower than in England), and by all
accounts were devoted to each other throughout their marriage.
Adelaide improved William's behaviour; he drank less, swore less
and became more tactful.[6]
Observers thought them parsimonious, and their lifestyle simple,
even boring.[7] William
eventually accepted the reduced increase in his allowance voted by
Parliament.[8]

On the Continent, Adelaide became pregnant but in her seventh
month of pregnancy, she caught pleurisy and during the illness she gave birth
prematurely. Her daughter, Charlotte, lived only a few hours.
Another pregnancy in the same year caused William to move the
household to England so his future heir would be born on English
soil, yet Adelaide miscarried at Calais during the journey (5 September 1819).
She became pregnant again, and a second daughter, Elizabeth, was
born in December 1820. Elizabeth seemed strong but died aged only
four months of "inflammation in the Bowels".[9]
Ultimately, William and Adelaide had no surviving children. Twin
boys were stillborn on 8 April 1822,[10] and a
possible brief pregnancy may have occurred within the same
year.

Princess Victoria of Kent came to be acknowledged as William's
heir, as Adelaide had no further pregnancies. While there were
rumours of pregnancies well into William's reign (dismissed by the
King as "damned stuff"), they seem to have been without basis.[11]

Queen
consort

At the time of their marriage, William was not heir presumptive
to the throne, but became so when his brother, Frederick, Duke of York, died childless in
1827. Given the small likelihood of his older brothers producing
heirs, and William's relative youth and good health, it had long
been considered extremely likely that he would become King in due
course. In 1830, on the death of his elder brother, George IV, William
acceded to the throne. One of King William's first acts was to
confer the Rangership of Bushy Park (for thirty-three years held by
himself) on Queen Adelaide.[12] This
act would allow Adelaide to remain at Bushy House for her lifetime. The King was
crowned, and Adelaide
was crowned as his queen consort, on 8 September 1831, at Westminster
Abbey. Adelaide was deeply religious and took the service very
seriously. William despised the ceremony, and acted throughout, it
is presumed deliberately, as if he was "a character in a comic
opera", making a mockery of what he thought to be a ridiculous
charade.[13]
Adelaide alone among those attending received any praise for her
"dignity, repose and characteristic grace".[14]

Adelaide was beloved by the British people for her piety,
modesty, charity, and her tragic childbirth history. A large
portion of her household income was given to charitable causes. She
also treated the young Princess Victoria of Kent (William's heir
presumptive and later Queen Victoria) with
kindness, despite her own inability to produce an heir and the open
hostility between William and Victoria's mother, the Dowager
Duchess of Kent. She refused to have women of questionable
virtue attend her Court. Wrote Clerk of the Privy CouncilCharles Greville of her, "The Queen is a
prude and refuses to have the ladies come décolletées to
her parties. George the 4th, who liked ample expanses of that kind,
would not let them be covered."[15]

Adelaide attempted, perhaps unsuccessfully, to influence the
King politically. She never spoke about politics in public,
however, she was strongly Tory.[16] It is
unclear how much of William's attitudes during the passage the Reform Act 1832
were due to her influence. The Press, the public and courtiers
assumed that she was agitating behind the scenes against
reform,[17] but
she was careful to be non-committal in public.[18] As a
result of her partiality, she became unpopular with reformers.[19]
Unbelievable rumours circulated that she was having an affair with
her Lord
Chamberlain, the Tory Lord Howe, but
almost everyone at court knew that Adelaide was inflexibly pious
and was always faithful to her husband.[20] The
Whig Prime Minister, Lord Grey, had Lord Howe
removed from Adelaide's household. Attempts to reinstate him after
the Reform Bill had passed were not successful as Lord Grey and
Lord Howe could not come to an agreement as to how independent Howe
could be of the government.[21]

In October 1834 a great fire destroyed much of the Palace
of Westminster, which Adelaide considered divine retribution
for the vagaries of reform.[22] When
the Whig ministry of Lord Melbourne was
dismissed by the King, The Times newspaper blamed the Queen's
influence, though she seems to have had very little to do with
it.[23]
Influenced by her similarly reactionary brother-in-law, the Duke of Cumberland,
she did write to the King against reform of the Church of
Ireland.[24]

Both William and Adelaide were fond of their niece, Princess Victoria of
Kent, and wanted her to be closer to them. Their efforts were
frustrated by Victoria's mother, the Dowager Duchess
of Kent. The Duchess refused to acknowledge Adelaide's
precedence, left letters from Adelaide unanswered and commandeered
space in the royal stables and apartments for her own use. The
King, aggrieved at what he took to be disrespect from the Duchess
to his wife, bluntly announced in the presence of Adelaide, the
Duchess, Victoria and many guests, that the Duchess was
"incompetent to act with propriety", that he had been "grossly and
continually insulted by that person", and that he hoped to have the
satisfaction of living beyond Victoria's age of majority, so that
the Duchess of Kent would never be Regent. Everyone was aghast at
the vehemence of the speech, and all three ladies were deeply
upset.[25] The
breach between the Duchess and the King and Queen was never fully
healed, but Victoria always viewed both of them with kindness.[26]

Queen
dowager

Queen Adelaide was dangerously ill in April 1837, at around the
same time that she was present at her sister's deathbed in
Meiningen but she recovered.[27] By
June it became evident that the King was fatally ill himself.
Adelaide stayed beside William's deathbed devotedly, not going to
bed herself for more than ten days.[28]
William IV died from heart
failure in the early hours of the morning of 20 June 1837 at Windsor Castle,
where he was buried. The first Queen Dowager in over a century
(Charles II's widow, Catherine of Braganza, had died
in 1705, and Mary
of Modena, wife of the deposed James II died in 1718), Adelaide
survived her husband by twelve years. After her husband's death,
Queen Adelaide became a tenant of William Ward and took
up residence at the latter's newly purchased house, Witley Court in Worcestershire
from 1842 until 1846. She was a frequent visitor to Gopsall Hall (now part of the
crown estate) in Leicestershire and many of the locals were very
fond of her. On one occasion, when meeting the people in Measham the public were told to
approach her by horse and carriage. One man was so desperate to
meet Queen Adelaide that he approached her in a bath-tub pulled by
a mule. The queen greeted him nevertheless.

She died during the reign of her niece Queen Victoria, on 2
December 1849 of natural causes at Bentley Priory in Middlesex and was buried at
St.
George's Chapel, Windsor. She wrote instructions for her
funeral during an illness in 1841 at Sudbury Hall: "I die in all humility", she
wrote, "we are alike before the throne of God, and I request
therefore that my mortal remains be conveyed to the grave without
pomp or state…to have as private and quiet a funeral as possible. I
particularly desire not to be laid out in state…I die in peace and
wish to be carried to the fount in peace, and free from the
vanities and pomp of this world."[29]

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Legacy

Queen Adelaide's name is probably best remembered in the Australian state of South
Australia, founded during the brief reign of William IV. The
capital city of Adelaide
was named after her at its founding in 1836; the Queen Adelaide
Club for women is still active there, and a bronze statue of Queen
Adelaide stands in the foyer of the Town Hall. There are Adelaide
Streets in Westminster, Bradford and Belfast in the UK, Toronto in Canada, Brisbane in Queensland, Fremantle in Western
Australia, and Dun Laoghaire in Ireland; there is also an
Adelaide Road and Adelaide Hospital (now the Adelaide
and Meath Hospital, Tallaght) in Dublin, an Adelaide Terrace in Perth, Western
Australia, and an Adelaide railway station in Belfast.
Australia has two Adelaide Rivers, in the Northern Territory and
Tasmania, and an Adelaide Reef in Queensland. The town of Adelaide
(originally Fort Adelaide) in the Eastern Cape Province of South
Africa, and Queen's Park, Brighton are also
named in her honour. The Citadel in Port Louis, capital of the Republic of Mauritius, is named Fort
Adelaide for her, the building having been started during the reign
of William in 1834.

In honour of the Queen's many visits, several places in
Leicestershire were named after Queen Adelaide. They include Queen
Street in Measham and the Queen Adelaide Inn (now demolished) in
Appleby Magna. There is also the Queen Adelaide Oak in Bradgate Park (once
home to Lady Jane
Grey). Under the oak Queen Adelaide pickined on Venison and
Crawfish from the estate.

Queen Victoria, who never forgot her aunt Adelaide's kindness to
her, remembered her at the christening of her firstborn child, Victoria Adelaide Mary
Louise.